Future Technology 500

For years, the benefits of using technology has come with the threat of sophisticated hacking and attacks. However, developments are always underway to try to provide more protection from these potential problems. The recent development of a cybersecurity research team to create what is known as a “Canary Trap”, though, has been seen as a game-changer within the tech industry.

This “Canary Trap” system has been designed with the purpose of providing hackers with fake documentation. By using an AI system that can provide these “trap” documents, hackers can be quickly caught and found out. The new AI system has been developed to help ensure that fake documents are spread to help conceal a particular secret. These can be used to help work out where information leaks stem from, or even to help create distractions that can otherwise protect and disguise genuinely valuable details.

The data protection system is known as WE-FORGE and is being developed by the Department of Computer Science. This will be used to help utilise AI to make sure that anyone hacking in is provided with falsified details. The realism of these documents make them almost impossible to verify as false by hackers. They are close enough to real data to look real but filled with fake data that immediately shows the data to be incorrect.

Similar trap programs have been in use for many years, used to help deliver decoys that can give an attacker a false impression of success.  However, WE-FORGE has taken this old-school approach and transformed it entirely for the better. Now, it can use natural language processing systems to generate fake content to be shared.

It might look authentic, but the data within is going to be false thus making it useless to hackers.

Why is a Canary Trap a worthwhile cybersecurity system?

For one, it can waste valuable time. Hackers spend huge sums of time and even money trying to find a way into the back-end. Believing they have done so they are then shown-up to be mistaken when the data is proven to be false. This wastes time and resources, but also harms their reputation within hacking circles as they are shown to be providing fake data to their ‘clients’.

This also removes the opportunity to even begin hacking. If someone who is keen to hack-in to a system knows there is a high likelihood they are wasting their time, it can act as a wonderful deterrent. By having databases with genuine information protected by this wall-like design. It means that hackers will be far less confident of finding anything they can legitimately work with.

For years, hacking has often left cybersecurity firms chasing the tail of the hackers. Now, a tool like this could offer an ideal buffer to stop any potential cybersecurity mistakes from happening.

Japan’s recent earthquake, tsunami and ongoing nuclear meltdowns got me to thinking if Man will ever conquer Mother Nature? It also got me to thinking which is more powerful, a tsunami or a rogue wave? If the two were to clash would they cancel each other out?

My tendency is to think they would be like two ships passing in the night barely noticing each other. Rogue waves, as in the movie “Perfect Storm” tend to be far from shore. A tsunami, on the other hand, can also travel far from shore as witnessed in Northern California from the recent 9.0 Japanese quake.

But, and this is a big but (to go along with my own big butt that consumed too many calories on a late night binge on chicken nuggets last night – but I digest) the advice given for boaters at least is that if a tsunami is coming then take your vessel 3 miles out to sea away from shore. For rogue waves, the closer to shore you are the safer you and your ship are. At least this is the conventional wisdom. Not that I’m into convention or wisdom.

So, the point I’m trying to make and doing a bad job in getting quickly to it is will there come a time when Man can overcome Mother Nature using science and technology. For instance here are some things I’ve thought about in regard to future technology to deal with catastrophic natural events:

1.      Pre-emptive strikes of explosives along volcanic plates to ease the pressure.

2.      Use of laser beams along fault lines for the same purposes.

3.      Instant early warning systems tied into our cell phones, laptops, PCs. There must be an app for that? Or perhaps there will be.

4.      In the future, say 50 or so years from now, there may be flying cars, buses, or even buildings for high level emergency evacuations.

5.      Having lived near the Mississippi River for a while I know that some houses are built on stilts to deal with occasional floods. Perhaps in the future, hydraulic stilts on future homes would be an option to deal with flooding, tsunamis and even the shaking from 9.0 and above earthquakes.

These are just a few ideas I came up with off the top of my head. I regularly put a mirror above my head to see small light bulbs going off and “word ideas” coming and going like drops of water in a hot frying pan. So, if you have an idea for how we can try to protect ourselves better from Mother Nature in the future using technology, then leave a comment. As for me, I’m going back to my mirror since I think I see a bald spot and there may just be a few new ideas ready to pop.